Calero CEO Details New Solution To Help Midmarket Manage SaaS Costs

‘Visibility, control, and optimization’ are the three pillars of the new offering, he said.

Calero, which provides a platform that helps companies manage recurring technology expenses, recently announced the Calero SaaS Management Platform (SMP).

SMP is designed to help organizations gain detailed insight into costs related to their SaaS applications, whether they are IT-approved apps, or are so-called “shadow apps” that users may procure on their own.

“The solution is built around three pillars: visibility, control, and optimization,” said Calero CEO Scott Gilbert in an interview with MES Computing. “Visibility is exactly what it sounds like: What do I have? Where is it? How much am I paying for it?”

That visibility spans across not only SaaS apps but also gives insight into telecom- and mobility-related expenses.

The control capability allows IT to keep SaaS, telecom, and mobile device inventory intact, Gilbert said.

“You want to make sure that every time you add something or remove something that you keep [inventory] up to date,” he said.

SMP can integrate with other internal systems, like HR. So, if an employee leaves the organization, and has a company-issued phone, for example, “then we can trigger the workflows and put the control in place to make sure we disconnect that and stop paying for that,” Gilbert explained.

The optimization capability assists IT teams in drilling down on costs such as if a mobile phone or a telecom circuit is costing too much and if there are other lower cost options available.

“We electronically integrate with all of the customers, internal platforms, all of the carriers that provide these services and pull that all into sort of a comprehensive platform that supports every step from procurement all the way through to payment for those services,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert also delved into how SMP can benefit midmarket organizations. Midmarket companies can move quickly, he said, and therefore, tend to be earlier adopters of some of the newest SaaS apps on the market.

“[Midmarket companies] don’t have the governance or red tape that prevents IT managers from putting new solutions in place. When it comes to SaaS, [that’s] where we are seeing the most traction,” he said about SMP’s adoption.

He also described the ease of use for midmarket IT.

“Almost all midmarket companies have a single sign-on; they either use Office 365 or Okta, or something like that,” he said.

Admins enter their credentials into SMP “and then behind the scenes we are using SSO logs to create a partial list of all the SaaS applications being leveraged. Who’s leveraging them, who’s logging in,” he said.

“But that’s only part of the picture, because then there’s those other applications that may not be integrated with SSO—sometimes you call it shadow IT.”

SMP includes an endpoint manager that can provide visibility into SaaS apps that may not be under IT control, Gilbert said.

The new offering also integrates with an organization’s general ledger. “So now we’re looking at expense reports, companies cutting checks,” Gilbert added. With the GL integration “you’re charging [software] licenses to the correct department. When someone starts, we automatically send out a license. When someone leaves, we disconnect the license.”

Gilbert said that SMP is a means for IT managers who may feel overwhelmed with SaaS sprawl and the related costs.

“We’re helping, saying, ‘look, just start with visibility, spin the platform up, get a look,” he said.

“If you can’t manage it, you can’t measure it,” he said.